Last I checked the most popular user message in Dark Souls Remastered was “Be wary of Left” and it’s very upsetting just how much the community has attached to that message. It’s orders of magnitude more popular than things like “Amazing chest ahead”
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The Souls community is…
They took a game about working together and made it a bunch of chest beating over who was the best on their own.
It’s got a conservative bend to say the least
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Driver: San Francisco.
The driving feels great. It’s a crime that Reflections haven’t made another Driver while Ivory Tower gets to crank out more mediocre slop.
It’s the only open world driving game with a good story (not a high bar, but it clears it by a mile). The mind-swapping mechanic adds so much. It plays so well to fans of the series, and fans of car chase movies in general, like how hitting 88mph in a Delorean will trigger the camera angle from Back to the Future, and unlock the driving test from the first Driver.
As good as Watch Dogs 2 was, I’d trade it in a heartbeat for a sequel to Driver: San Francisco.
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Saints Row the Third and IV have ruined open world crime games because by the end of IV they basically removed all the parts that sucked and replaced them with solutions that should have been completely obvious.
While Rockstar seems to be desperately in love with their “living world” that feels like a completely empty box where absurd quasi people yell implausible things at you as you pass by, Volition went the other way with it. The open world was a construct for someone to wreak havoc in, and there was never any authenticity or life to it. Instead of being precious about their fake town, they just let you go nuts. Run super fast, have your vehicles spawn instantly, walk up the walls, jump incredibly high, make yourself invincible, we don’t care. Change any part of your appearance as often as you want. The side missions are absurd and hilarious because they somehow stretch the rules of the world even further. By the time you hit IV, the odds of you having any meaningful interaction with the city are basically nil, and the experience is better for it.
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I didn’t think Halo was good but a whole lot of other people sure did, which ruined the genre by shifting the market onto consoles.
If that counts.
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Chrono Trigger was the first 2D JRPG that I played all the way through. As a result it’s hard to go back to any of the other classics, even many games that came out after Chrono Trigger, because it is such a pinnacle of it’s genre.
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Dragon Age II while not exactly a good game, has ruined me to believing that all other CRPGS are overwhelmingly bloated with content while New Vegas taught me that none of the others are capable of maintaining a coherent theme throughout their game.
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I actually like the more obtuse nature of the earlier games. There’s more satisfaction in completing a hunt because of it, though I find World to be much easier to jump into quickly. I’ll definitely be playing GU when it comes out, but completely understand why someone would rather not go back to that stuff.
Here’s hoping they make a new MH game for the Switch that includes changes they made in World!
It took me a long time to have fun playing platformers again after I played Super Meat Boy.
Rocksmith has pretty much ruined solo rhythm games for me. I can play a rhythm game with excellent music and practice a skill that other people seem to think is worthwhile at the same time. I still keep Rock Band around for parties, but I have zero desire to play it solo anymore.
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I love Rocksmith and I really need to get back on that train as most of what I learned has atrophied. It didn’t really change my feelings on rhythm games though because it’s such a different thing.
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Life Is Strange and Hellblade ruined games for me. Why can I not care about characters any more as much as I did Chloe? Why can nothing assault my senses as overwhelmingly as being Senua? I really struggle to give a shit these days.
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Same but Dead Space and to a lesser degree Dead Space 2 and for not entirely the same reasons.
I still need to play Dead Space. I got the games on steam but they have this weird issue of having all these free dlc guns and shit already unlocked so all the weapon progression is fucked
A possible solution: challenge yourself to a plasma cutter only run. It’s doable on normal difficulty, even if it requires some careful aim and liberal use of stasis. Honestly, it’s the best gun in the game anyway.
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Ogre Battle 64 has ruined all games for me.
This feels kind of silly but I don’t trust free to play games after Battlefield: Heroes. That sounds like I had a bad time with Heroes, but actually that game was very lovingly crafted, and so unique in its silliness. I was a part of the community from the game’s beta, and watched as the utopian optimism of Ben Cousin’s “you’ll never have to pay to win” pitch for this casual shooter slowly morphed into something more aligned with the realities of free to play economics.
The game was really sharp and fun from its foundation, and taught me a lot about how to balance a team (despite not allowing you to switch classes on the fly). But that mix of quality and the stark reality of the free to play model has made me less trustworthy of future F2P: if a strong (but small) shooter can’t make it, how can I trust newer games to not compromise on quality to be economically sustainable?
On a different but similar note, the cartoon-ey mechanics of Heroes totally ruined Fortnite for me. I got so used to the bounce and feel of Heroes that Fortnite’s floaty-ness feels totally foreign to me.
This game got me into the genre more than it ruined it for me, but I doubt I will ever enjoy a run-based Rouge-esque action game as much as I have The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. I have about 250 hours in that game and I’ll probably put in even more once I get a gaming PC again. The variety in gameplay provided by the different characters, enemies, and room layouts, coupled with the buckwild ways you can upgrade and outfit your character, hasn’t been beaten by anything I’ve played since. Games like Enter the Gungeon and Rogue Legacy are tighter and more polished, but they can’t move Isaac from my heart.
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Honestly it’s the only way I play those games. I did it in Dead Space 1 to get that achievement and had so much fun that I played 2 with just the plasma cutter.
Games that use rhythm as one of multiple mechanics or do something unique, I’ll still get into (Crypt of the Necrodancer, Thumper, Patapon), but Rocksmith has pretty much killed any desire to practice score-chasing rhythm games like I used to.
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